September Gardening Update

Head Gardener, Kate’s, Tips For The Month Ahead

Welcome to the first of our monthly updates from the Walled Garden, at what is almost the close of my first year here as Head Gardener.

It's been a busy and productive year, so as August comes to a close I'm grateful for cooler mornings, softer light, and the opportunity to slow down and change tack. It's still a busy time of course but late summer brings a shift in focus from the somewhat hectic business of keeping the garden in good order, to more considered planning for the year ahead.

With that in mind, now is the perfect time to take semi-ripe cuttings of tender perennials such as Pelargoniums, as well as many hardy plants you want to have more of next year. These are fresh shoots of this year's growth which are hardened at the base but still with a soft pliable tip, stripped of all but the topmost leaves, trimmed to about hand's length, and struck into a gritty compost mix. We have propagated most of our varieties of Penstemon this way, as well as Nepeta, Periwinkle, Wiegiela, and Hydrangea. In the same vein, we are now starting to squirrel away paper bags of seeds of hollyhocks, Hesperis, poppies, and corncockle to direct sow in spring's soft showers.

In August we were also pruning away the exuberant summer growth on our apple cordons to reveal the maturing fruit and give the trees their valuable winter structure, and whilst for many this is a high summer job it comes a little later for us at this latitude to give the wood time to ripen. If this last summer has taught us anything it's that nothing is guaranteed but these downshifts in tempo are, for now at least, reminders of the ebb and flow of the seasons - how lucky we are to be a small part of it!